Adriana Rodriguez, Contributing Writer
A novel full of mystery and suspense, Ghanian- American novelist Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom incites awareness of America’s opium crisis and lasting racial and gender issues.
The novel opens in Ghana and mainly follows Gifty, a young black Ghanaian woman living in the United States. It follows her from childhood to adulthood as she deals with the death of her brother, her mother’s depression, and her identity as a black woman in the field of science.
Since her childhood, Gifty’s parents constantly overlooked her in favor of her older brother, Nana.
There was a scene, for example, where Gifty is a baby crying in a desperate way, yet she goes unacknowledged by both her father and brother who are in the same room.
This neglect was continued by her mother long after her father abandoned them and was still in effect after Nana’s death.
This intense favoritism comes to a point where it can even be interpreted as a form of internal misogyny- a subconscious projection of sexist ideas which enforce male supremacy.
This fracturing of the family is reflected by the fragmentation of the plot. Gyasi disorients the reader by repeatedly changing the setting and time period in each chapter. The reader can go from reading about Gifty going to a racist church with her brother, to reading about Gifty’s astonishment towards a female scientist who embraces their gender.
Although semi-confusing, this back-and-forth gradually provides the reader with a complete narrative of Gifty’s life and her struggles, something which further develops the novel’s sense of mystery and suspense.
As previously alluded to, Gifty struggles with her identity as a black female scientist- a struggle that is only emphasized by her immigrant roots. Her struggles are a constant reminder to the reader that Gifty lives during a time that is full of racism and sexism- issues that are still prevalent in today’s society.
Nana dies by heroin overdose and serves to incite awareness of the opium crisis rampant in the United States. Gifty personally witnessed her brother’s descent into drug addiction and was so affected by it, that she chose neuroscience as her field of study to find explanations for her brother’s addiction and subsequent behavior.
Gyasi’s descriptive inclusion of scientific facts and studies in her novel enforces Gifty’s ingrained need for knowledge upon the reader. Just as Gifty is discovering new information about drug abuse in her search for answers as she conducts her experiments, so is the reader as they read the Transcendent Kingdom.
Gifty’s search is impeded by the duty that she has towards her mother, a woman afflicted with such deep depression that she has become catatonic.
Her mother remains a distant figure to both Gifty and the reader up to her very death as there is a continuous lack of interaction between her and her daughter. This means that there is also a lack of interaction between her and the reader since the book is mainly from Gifty’s point of view.
This is something that is proven by her lack of a name – something very shocking since even Gifty’s father was called “Chin-Chin Man.”
Gifty’s mom was more concerned with her work and her religion than she was with Gifty. Not once in the novel was Gifty’s mom ever fully focused on her daughter, not even subconsciously- a behavior that Gifty’s mom never attempted to correct.
Overall, Transcendent Kingdom has become one of the most acclaimed, must-read contemporary novels. It contains a fresh narrative whose fragmentation perfectly reflects the characters’ mental struggles with her race and gender, while also reflecting the division present in her family.
